Today was Facebook #datadetox day. I started with what Facebook knows, or thinks it knows about me, and how that influences the ads it serves me, etc. You can start by using an extension calledĀ āWhat Facebook Thinks You LikeĀ in the (ironic, I know)Ā Chrome Web Store.
Some of this surprised me or seems just totally random. Here are my interests reflected in business and industry -- you can hover over and find out why these interests have been connected to you. It ranges from things that I liked, to apps that I downloaded (on my iphone, not fb), to really seemingly useless interests likeĀ āStudentā orĀ āHouseā that simply say that I clicked on something that indicated that I am interested in those things.Ā
You can then click onĀ āStudentā and get some example ads that people with this category will also see. Not sure what to make of this set really.
Whatās nice is with this extension Iām now using I have the choice to remove this (and I did).
Here is myĀ āAbout youā screenshot and related summary: According to FB, I am a āvery liberalā frequent traveler born in September who has an African American multicultural affinity as well as uses a number of Apple devices.
DD then moves you through looking at FB Settings and making some edits there -- for example, I did decide to turn off my open setting to search engines, so now itās less likely my FB content will come up in an open web search. I didnāt change what my friends see and how public the content is that I share at FB. Iām pretty conscious, I think, of what I share. I just decided I donāt need it to be crawled all the time by search engines.
You also get a chance to look at your FB activity and I did that but again, I really didnāt change anything. I did download another extension, Data Selfie, to both Chrome and Firefox at DD recommendation; I will come back to that in a week an see what it tells me.
ps. An update on day #2 -- In a conversation with colleagues about the challenge of shifting to an entirely new browser and the related workflow dependencies, Iām going for an in-between, ie. that I will use Firefox for my personal gmail and activities and then Chrome at work and for my teaching. So just fyi and in case that idea is helpful to you too.
pps. FollowĀ @AndreaZellnerĀ for her zany adventures doing data detox too.